The Farming Seasons

© Graham Cooper

Sheila Mason, Keasden Head Farm

The Farming Seasons

Farming is a 365-days a year vocation requiring tremendous energy, commitment and determination. Farming is at the heart of the Forest of Bowland’s predominantly rural economy and the landscape looks and functions the way it does in part due to the efforts of the area’s farmers.

The changing seasons inevitably dictate most farmers’ workload, with the available hours of daylight playing a pivotal role in what gets done and when. During the winter months, modern farming is on the whole less labour intensive, but during the summer months, a 12-hour day is often standard – farmers don’t get overtime!

But the amount of daylight is just one of the natural cycles of the seasons that dictate the farming schedule. Read on as we document a year in the life of a handful of Bowland farmers: their trials and tribulations and the triumphs and tragedies along the way.

Some of the farms featured are profiled farms from our website which provide opportunities for educational and group visits. www.forestofbowland.com/ farm-profiles

In order to help groups take advantage of this resource, we have a Farm Visit Transport Fund, run by Champion Bowland on behalf of the AONB. Visit: www.forestofbowland.com/ Farm-Visit-Transport-Fund

Bell Sykes Farm

Dave Miller

SPRING: New Life Bursts Forth as the Countryside Awakens

Up on the western fringe of the AONB on the hills above Garstang, Dave and Edwina Miller are trying to keep track of their flock, which will number some 900 sheep by the end of the lambing season.

Along with son David, the Millers run a mixed upland farm 600ft above sea level. The views stretch for miles across the Wyre Valley andFylde Plain to the coast and beyond to the Irish Sea. While the conditions for lambing aren’t quite as extreme as those found further east on the highest hill farms in Bowland, lambing generally starts indoors to make sure the next generation of Cobble Hey lambs get off to a flying start.

Once the weather warms up a bit and the lambs have put on some weight, they are turned out onto the grass and quickly start charging around the wideopen fields at Cobble Hey.

As soon as they hear Dave’s quadbike and trailer rumbling down the track, the flock begins something of a stampede towards the feeding stations; it’s like a woolly charge of the Light Brigade.

“ The ewes and newborn lambs are put together in bonding pens. When the ewes are feeding and mothering well, they are transferred into a group pen and after a couple of days, if the weather is fit, they are moved into the fields ”

Their flock is dominated by Dalesbred and Teeswater hybrids for hardiness and wool quality and the majority are born indoors to give them the best possible start in life.

Dave and Edwina do get a little bit of help with the lambs from willing young volunteers who visit the farm to help with bottlefeeding, before they are released out into the fields once the weather warms up a little. By Easter, lambing is pretty much done and dusted, with most of the lambs and ewes outdoors, playing king of the castle and chasing their siblings across the fields.

Peter Blackwell

SUMMER: Sowing the Seeds of a Wildflower Revival

On the outskirts of Slaidburn, Bell Sykes Farm’s Coronation Meadows provide living seedbanks that preserve our meadowland natural history.

The meadows at Bell Sykes Farm in Slaidburn are some of the last and most important wildflower speciesrich meadows in Lancashire and their importance is internationally recognised. This vulnerable habitat hasbecome increasingly scarce and has largely disappeared in Lancashire through changes in agricultural practices. The meadows contain native grass species such as meadow foxtail and sweet vernal grass, along with moisture loving flowers like great burnet and meadowsweet.

They are home to iconic northern upland species including meadow crane’s-bill and melancholy thistle along with a colourful mix of yellow rattle, eyebright, pignut, buttercups, knapweed and lady’s mantle.

Peter Blackwell, wife Lin and daughter Lisa leave the meadows to grow late into the summer before cutting and bailing, so that the seeds can develop and then be used to regenerate wildflower meadows elsewhere.

“ The grasses put their energy into growing upwards rather than bulking up their foliage nearer the ground. I’d say the yield was about half what we would normally expect ”

The majority of the crop is used to feed Peter’s own herd and they sell some to local farmerswhose livestock seem to appreciate the richness of this 100 per cent natural diet. Contractors cut the remainder and then translocate the rich seed mix to help kick-start the creation of new wildflower meadows across the UK.

So it’s well into July before the fields are mowed and the seed-rich grasses left to dry naturally in the searing heat of high summer.

In the wet – some would say, non-existent – summer of 2017, Peter was forced to make silage as the weather was too unpredictable to guarantee the warm, dry spell required to make proper hay.

Conditions were so bad that he wasn’t able to cut some of the meadows without causing damage.

The reverse was true in 2018. With little rain from April, the grasses were much sparser than they would normally be.

Peter’s low intensity approach means haytime remains very much a ‘hands-on’ activity where the whole family and friends pitch in. Son Marcus arrives home from his ‘day job’ in computer hardware design to lend a hand getting the last couple of loads of bales safely into the barn.

Relying on a 35-year-old tractor and International 440 baling machine, Peter and family make standard bales that are then manually loaded onto a trailer and stacked in a traditional stone outbarn.

It’s hard but satisfying work on a close evening in early August. As we climb through the fields, collecting the bales as we go, the pastures offer wonderful views across the farmland to Slaidburn and up the Hodder valley to Bowland Knotts.

“ It’s hard graft, but we’ve never been afraid of a bit of that and it’s very satisfying to see another year’s worth of winter feed safely stacked up in the barn ”

With 108 bales loaded onto Peter’s new tri-axle trailer, Peter carefully pilots the old Marshall to the outbarn overlooking his farmhouse. As he backs the tractor into the oversize doorway, the resident barn owl flees to a nearby tree and Lin helps guide the trailer into the barn.

Unloading the bales and stacking them up towards the roof is even hotter work in the still, airless barn, but the ride back in the trailer for a well-earned brew and homemade cake at Bell Sykes is ample reward.

“Modern farming methods mean that a lot of farms spend a small fortune on winter feed” says Peter “Especially in a winter like we’ve had last year – but we’ve got pretty much all the forage we need up in the top barn.”

AUTUMN: Harnessing the Harvest to Stem the Tide

In the enchanted valley of Roeburndale, sustainable farming and land management methods are being employed to preserve rare species and stem a destructive cycle of flooding after decades of soil degradation.

On the northern fringes of the AONB, there is a steep-sided, densely wooded valley that feels like another world. Verdant, overgrown, peaceful and slightly unkempt, setting foot in Roeburndale is like stepping back in time.

There’s a slight sense of abandonment here – as if the custodians have simply got out of the way to give Mother Nature some extra breathing space. By modern farming standards, it’s something of a lost world, but to its owner: Dr Rod Everett, it’s paradise.

Backsbottom Farm covers some 230 acres of moorland and woodland on the western flank of this enchanting valley and it’s all farmed along permaculture principles: 100 per cent organic and minimal to zero chemical and pharmaceutical input.

Rod has travelled the world giving talks on permaculture yet enjoys a simple life which he shares with wife Jane on this isolated farm perched near the head of the valley some 400 feet above sea level.

Power is provided via a 3-kilowatt wind turbine and the water from natural springs.

Much of the upper slopes are given over to organic fruit and veg, and Rod’s four rambling orchards now comprise some 200 different apple varieties, with a few sheep grazing contentedly among the trees.

The orchards are a living seedbank that should ensure the survival of rare strains of apple from Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cumbria and in 2018 they produced a bumper crop.

“We’re looking at three times the usual yield,” said Rod. “We really need to work out how to make use ofthem without any wastage. So now they are all scratted (pulped) and pressed to make cider and then when ready, converted to craft cider vinegar. This will mature for two years in oak barrels. Be ready in 2021 for a special treat. The apple pressings are converted to silage for the sheep.”

The entire farm buzzes with insect life, from rare butterflies and dragonflies, to bees, hoverflies and hornets. A solitary horseshoe bat is hawking insects above the river in broad daylight.

Below the farm, a steep track dives into the wooded slopes of the valley, where the River Roeburn sparkles in the warm autumn sunshine. And yet after heavy winter rainfall, this pretty babbling brook can mutate into something altogether more threatening.

“ It’s still early days, but the small-scale flood prevention measures we’ve put in seem to have had a positive impact and replacing some of the trees lost in the recent floods may be playing their part too.”

In August 1967 the course of the river was diverted by around 150 yards by a devastating flood caused by a summer cloudburst. A wall of water demolished 13 houses, cottages and barns,deposited 24-tonne rocks 400 yards down-river, took out every bridge in the valley and killed dozens of livestock.

In a bid to prevent a repetition of these environmental traumas, Rod has implemented a series of natural flood prevention measures on his land. In-river training structures redirect the flow so that seasonal floodwaters recontour and reinforce the natural banks, while peat and blanket bog restoration and a series of swales and dams on the edge of the moorland above hold the water higher up the catchment, delaying its descent towards the river channel and smoothing out sudden spikes in the water level.

WINTER: In the Bleak Midwinter SomethingSmall and Woolly Stirs

Sheila Mason farms at Keasden Head – high on the hills above Bentham on the northern slope of the Bowland Fells, where spring isn’t in any particular hurry to arrive.

Over on the western fringe of Bowland at Cobble Hey, Dave and Edwina will be tidying up the gardens and preparing to welcome the first excited schoolchildren to bottlefeed their lambs. In Slaidburn, Peter will be eagerly awaiting the first wildflower blooms and keeping his fingers crossed for a bumper seed crop, while Rod will be looking forward to the first delicate bluebells peeping up from the forest floor.

The farming year has been unfolding like this every year for decades and this natural timetable – largely dictated by the progression of the seasons – is unlikely to alter anytime soon.

While the first signs of spring may be appearing in the valleys, on the hill farms up on the Bowland Fells, winter retains its icy grip. Yet the plaintive cries of the first tiny lambs are only a heartbeat away. On Bowland’s lower lying farms in the valley bottoms, the Christmas decorations are barely back in the loft whenlambing begins early in February.

Sheila farms 322 acres of upland farmland bordering heather moor, adjacent to a wooded river valley. It’s an especially demanding time of year for sheep farmers, who may have to function on just a few hours’ sleep a night for the next month or so. Ewes tend to lamb late at night or early in the morning and in wet weather, the new-born lambs can really struggle to survive outdoors. For this reason, much of the early lambing happens indoors in barns and lambing sheds – offering some protection from the elements and a fighting chance of survival.

“ I wonder what I’m going to find in the morning, because it can be a scene of absolute devastation after a really wet and windy night ”

“Because it’s so cold outside, and there’s so little grass at this time of year, we tend to lamb our zwartbles inside in pens. They are better off bedded up and we can keep our eye on them. We have cameras on the pens and if there are any new arrivals during the night, I like to get up and make sure they are all fine and give them a once-over. By morning they are usually suckling well and absolutely fine.

“Lambing is a pretty full on time for us: when you aren’t checking for new arrivals you’re constantly checking the feed and making sure the new-borns are suckling properly. We have to help out some ewes with a bit of supplementary bottle-feeding and occasionally a ewe will reject one of her lambs so we try to get a more experienced foster mum to adopt her.”

And so the farming year comes full circle. In another few short weeks, as the days lengthen and the green shoots of spring return to the lowlands, the fields will soon be full of gambolling lambs.

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